explosivecombat | NIETZSCHE; DEAD PHILOSOPHERS' INBOX

...which is why the intent matters. Because first I need to decide what I want the energy to do, and then I have to make the circle to control the energy, rather than to invoke it. That's what I was doing wrong before — or at least part of it. The circle is like a container, with the lines directing what's put into it. It's not about summoning something, it's about holding it. Is that it?

Good! That's very good - keep that up and I may have to be proud of you.

But yes, that's exactly it; as I said at the beginning, you can't create from nothing. All the energy you'll ever need for a transmutation already exists; it's simply a matter of harnessing it and directing it. Some disciplines simply do that in different ways than others.

Or in your case, controlling the built-in, orchestrated instability to destroy what you want it to.

That's how yours works, isn't it?

Usually, yes. I have a few other methods that I use, but those are last resorts - they're either not terribly effective for anything other than defensive maneuvers, or they have undesirable effects if used too often.

If the alchemy reflects its master, then I could remark on what that implies about you by extension.

On the other hand, you still haven't answered my original question; we got distracted by my unexpectedly productive circle-drawing habits.

And what sort of answer were you looking for?

How you think the talents I listed for you will translate into alchemy. Or, if that's not why you had me come up with them, then the reasoning behind providing them would suffice.

Well, bear in mind that I'm not going to tell you straight-out what you should study, just because what I want and what you want are likely two different things and that will affect exactly how successful you'll be. I had you list these things for yourself just as much as they were for me - after all, perhaps you would come up with a direction on your own - but at least this way we'll both be on the same page when it comes to what I'm suggesting for you; I have something to base my suggestions off of, and you can at least understand where I'm coming from in making those suggestions in the first place.

Before we begin properly, however, I would like to put out there that the qualities you've listed sound a good amount like those possessed by another State Alchemist I've heard of; I just don't think you'd want to go in the same direction he did.

Given that I'm quickly discovering that my difficulties with the field so far lie in the lack of the right frame of reference, I suspect you won't have to worry about me finding my own direction — once I have a sufficient starting point to cast off from.

And I know bait when I hear it. What direction did he choose, and would it happen to be anyone I know?

He isn't anyone in Johto, if that's what you're asking; in all the time I've been here, he never has been.

But from what I've heard, he's some sort of genius when it comes to alchemy; he joined the military as an older teenager, and though he's by no means the youngest in our country to pass the State Alchemist exam, he was far younger than most - from what I've heard, he would have been accepted at about the age that I started studying properly (though by our country's standards, I started a bit late, so take that with a grain of salt, perhaps).

His specialty, as well, was incredibly impressive - I believe one time I told you that it would be ridiculously impractical to destroy things by breaking them down into their core materials every time, because of the encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry that would require. He was fully capable of doing that. He manipulated things on a molecular level, literally altering the chemical makeup of any given material to get the results he wanted. I'm told he could tell you what almost any given object consisted of, chemically, simply by looking at it; the more difficult objects only required direct physical contact - he could set his hands on something, or perhaps pick it up, and tell you almost anything you wanted to know about the core materials used to create whatever he was touching.

Obviously, this sort of talent could lead very easily into some creative problem-solving and ways to facilitate escapes, if one were so inclined; it's fairly clear how memory plays into this sort of thing as well.

Now there's a level of talent and expertise worthy of aspiring to.

But you said I wouldn't want to go in the direction he did. Is that because he used his talents in a destructive capacity?

The way he preferred to utilize his talents was through making chemical explosives; it's been said that he could make literally anything into a bomb, and one of his specialized ways of weaponizing it was through causing slow-acting, precisely timed chemical reactions.

He was also a psychopath.

He liked using people as materials; he would often convert them into walking time bombs while they were still alive. He was arrested toward the end of the war in Ishval; he murdered several of his superior officers after they tried to stop him from committing war crimes that hadn't even been conceived of by lawmakers yet.

I compare you to my psychopath, and you compare me to yours. How nice.

Am I really that brilliant, in your esteem?

No.

In my experience, that sort of brilliance comes at the expense of sanity.

An equivalent exchange, then? That trade's demands would be too steep for me, it's true.

How do you counter alchemy like that? Is there a way to reverse it?

I only know what I've been told; I've never spoken to this person myself, and chemistry has never been my strong suit besides. If I had to guess, however, I'd imagine that sort of process wouldn't be easily reversed; I would be surprised if anyone besides him would know how to do it properly.

From what I understand, he's no longer a threat; he eventually escaped from prison, but he was killed in battle several months later.

I'm of two minds how to feel about that, frankly. Glad to hear such a threat is neutralized, but at the same time, disappointed both for the loss of life and such potential.

But can it really be considered a loss of potential? After all, he'd likely insist that it wasn't - he was using his talent in the way that he saw fit. Just because you don't agree with how he chose to utilize it doesn't mean that his potential was necessarily wasted; it was his power, to use as he saw fit. Is it a waste if the wielder is satisfied?

Furthermore, can we really say that he had genuine potential at all, given that he was too insane to use it in any sort of manner that would be considered productive? Mind you, from what I understand he was always like that - can potential that has no ability to be recognized in the first place even be considered to exist?

Whatever happened to "be thou for the people"? Regardless of whether or not the wielder is satisfied, he wholly ignored the charge that — concededly, as I choose to interpret it — his abilities be used in greater service to mankind. Granted, I'm drawing my conclusions from a foundation made of a lot of assumptions, but I presume your psychopath didn't spend a great deal of time focusing on the academic aspects of alchemy, or of trying to further the scope of human knowledge through it.

And in a grander sense, I think it is valid to say he had genuine potential — assuming someone in history was going to end up with that level of genius and talent, it's unfortunate that it went to someone who made the choices and seized the opportunities that he did.

Ah, but this is where we get into the reasons why I fundamentally disagree with holding anything that can be so broadly-interpreted as a standard that others should be held to. "Be thou for the people" is still entirely in consideration here; after all, this was a State Alchemist that was sent to the front lines during the Ishval Civil War. While we can argue that the practice of turning human beings into explosives in the first place isn't ethical in the least - because objectively speaking, it obviously isn't - and therefore defies that mandate, it's been determined by those in power (those that enforce "Be thou for the people" in the first place) that he's working for the greater good of mankind as long as he's doing it to the people on the opposing side.

So you fundamentally disagree with it, but you still wanted to impose it on me to see what I'd say? Is that because it's all part of the procedure, or because you were curious to see if I'd think to reject it, myself?

And accepting the determination of those in power in a situation like that sounds suspiciously like a sham that claims to be "for the people" when it's frankly closer to "for the select few in power", instead.

It was mostly because it's part of the procedure - after all, I fundamentally disagree with it, but that doesn't mean that I'm not expected to adhere to it anyway. It's along the lines of how some people fundamentally disagree with certain crimes being illegal, but the law keeps them from committing those crimes simply because they don't want to be arrested; while my country is far from a flat-out police state, it is highly militarized. As such, there's a time and a place for defying laws that one rejects or finds abhorrent, and that time and place is generally not "whenever we feel like it" - defying such things requires an uprising.

That said, however, I'll admit that I was curious to see whether you would notice the flaw in using something so dependent on interpretation as some sort of rule or mandate in the first place. Granted, defying "Be thou for the people" isn't something that you'll get arrested for unless you're explicitly breaking some other law - this psychopath that we've been discussing was arrested for murdering his superior officers, not failing to uphold his own honor - but at the same time, it's definitely a societal mandate. State Alchemists tend to be treated rather badly by the general population because they're seen as violating or ignoring it; we get called all sorts of interesting slurs, and we're generally looked upon with either fear or extreme disdain. It's something that we're expected to do, even if it can't be directly enforced.

The government is aware of this and for all intents and purposes expects us to adhere to it as well; if we weren't deemed to be upholding that mandate in some way, we wouldn't be State Alchemists in the first place. However, to use our psychopath as an example again, an argument can be made that acting in the defense of your country is acting on the behalf of the greater good, thus making him fundamentally no different than any other soldier that really enjoys his job - obviously, the torture and the sadism that he was engaging in toward the end was not acceptable, nor was it acceptable for him to murder his superior officers, but such things wouldn't be acceptable from any other soldier, either.

Is it ethically and morally correct for him to take pleasure in killing people? Probably not. Is it a sign that something is likely seriously wrong with the soldier in question? Of course. But he was still fulfilling his duty to his country, even if his methods were unorthodox to say the least. So it becomes a question of whether we should consider killing with alchemy to be more morally repugnant than killing with any other weapon - people are going to die either way. Does it make that much of a difference how they're killed?

And yet you said you wouldn't stop me from creating gold from lead — theoretically — even though there's likewise a law against that. You're the only one in this situation who would've known there was a mandate to include it in the first place, and this isn't "whenever you feel like it" because it's specifically a situation where that law could only be in force if you decided to impose it on yourself. So you fundamentally disagree with it, but you chose to stay in line with the expectations of superiors that aren't even here to impose it on you, and when there's absolutely no consequence for failing to do so.

...

...but it's different for me, isn't it. Because I haven't sworn allegiance to your country or lived under its system of laws, so you can't expect me to adhere to that same self-imposed discipline that you're following.

~~Teacher, I think I just learned something.~~

And is that a rhetorical question, whether it makes a difference, or would you actually like to see me try to answer it?

I'd like to hear your thoughts, should you have any on the matter.

Then I think it does make a difference. It's true that people will die either way, and in that sense one death isn't more morally acceptable or repugnant than any other, but I also think that focuses entirely on the ends, when there's room to take into consideration the means. There's a difference between a fast and clean — I suppose one word you might use is "humane", if death can be called that at all — death than one that's extended, drawn-out, or the result of torture. Yes, it's all still death, but there is on some level a difference as a consequence of the method.

Maybe it's a question of power. If being an alchemist is a state-sanctioned privilege for an elite few, then it stands to follow that there's a certain higher standard that ought to come with that privilege. In my world, it's a given among the nations considered most civilized that the ultimate sovereign authority lies in the people of a nation, and that it's only by their sanction that the government exists to serve them. It's an inherent contract, and it's the charge of the government not to abuse the powers it's been given, lest the people choose to throw off that government and create another more aligned with what they feel is right. To have the alchemists, an elite group of immensely powerful soldiers, answering only a handful of government officials whose word alone decides, effectively, the law...

There's more at play than just the death — that's what I think. Maybe the moral complications aren't in the death itself, but the death also doesn't occur in a vacuum, and that's where my reservations about it lie.

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